Arrival: El Chaltén
El Chaltén was founded on 12 October 1985 as an act of deliberate geopolitics. Argentina and Chile had a long-running dispute over Lago del Desierto and the surrounding Andean watershed, and the Santa Cruz provincial government moved to populate the territory by decree — establishing a town where there had previously been only a handful of estancias. It worked: the border arbitration ruled in Argentina's favour in 1994, and what had been a sovereignty manoeuvre gradually became something else entirely. The town takes its name from the Tehuelche word for the mountain the Aonikenk people considered sacred — chaltén, meaning smoking mountain, a reference to the cloud that almost permanently caps Cerro Fitz Roy's summit. Moreno renamed the peak in 1877 to honour Robert FitzRoy, captain of the Beagle during Darwin's voyage of the 1830s, but the Tehuelche name persisted and now gives the town its identity.
Today, roughly 3,000 people live here year-round, in a community characterised by its mountain culture — climbers, guides, scientists, and the kind of internationalism that remote places generate when they draw people from everywhere. All the hiking trails in the Los Glaciares northern sector begin at the edge of town, requiring no transport beyond a pair of boots. The main street, Avenida San Martín, holds most of the restaurants, gear shops, and bakeries; a craft beer scene has developed over the past decade that punches well above the town's size.
Check into the campsite, get the gear sorted, and look north — if the clouds have cleared, Fitz Roy's unmistakable silhouette will be visible from almost anywhere in town. There is still enough afternoon ahead to make the first walk worthwhile.